Posted on 04/18/2018 9:35:42 AM PDT by ThinkingBuddha
Few figures of the 20th Century have been as relentlessly maligned as Francisco Franco Bahamonde, who ruled as Spain’s Caudillo (supreme leader) from 1939 until his death in 1975. Franco’s death was celebrated with vulgar, vindictive glee in the obituary columns of Establishment publications that had treated the passing of Communist mass murderers with respectful solemnity.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Perhaps a good suggestion will surface
The Spanish Labyrinth by Gerald Brenan is also a classic on the years leading up to the Civil War.
Brenan was on the fringe of the Bloomsbury group and took off to Spain to read and educate himself rather than attending university.
Thanks so much for the guidance. I have always been put off by the antagonism toward Franco and the overly sympathetic view of the communists.
Paul Johnson gave a short chapter in Modern Times that I found interesting but it was not near in depth enough.
Agreed regarding Franco and Pinochet. I’m not sure I’d agree with Oliver Cromwell, though: That guy persecuted a whole lot of Catholics if I recall correctly. Besides, at least one libertarian actually made a speech that condemned Cromwell and his Glorious Revolution, and did I mention he was a libertarian (ie, NOT a royalist by any stretch)?
https://misesuk.org/2016/09/08/how-glorious-was-the-glorious-revolution/
Cronwell? Yes, I’m a fan because he was Britain’s first and only Republican.
He must've been a dick then.
Define Republican, because that can mean a whole number of things. After all, technically, Robespierre and Lenin would be Republicans due to founding the French Republic and the USSR, which stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, yet neither of them were actually good people at all. Same goes for the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Though even Cromwell was a far better man than Lenin and Robespierre, not to mention the Spanish Republicans, since at least HE tried to retain his religion rather than gut it altogether in the name of atheism like they did.
Besides, as the link I provided earlier indicated, Cromwell and the Glorious Revolution weren’t exactly all that good of events (barely being much better than the French Revolution or various Communist revolutions).
No, great point. The traitors that fought against Franco called themselves Republicans, and the French Republic is/was a joke.
I mean Republicans in the vein of the founders of the USA. Meaning limited suffrage (which no longer is a principle adhered to), but responsible government, with checks and balances, and limited power in the POTUS, checked by the Congress.
For what we have in this world I do consider US Republicanism the best system followed by Parliamentary systems (Canada, UK, Australia). The rest that follow pure democracy are a mess - Israel, Denmark, ect...
Yes really. One division of volunteers is hardly the same as committing the entire country and all its resources to the Axis cause. But you knew that already.
I’m with you on the first two. Pinochet and Franco were not ideal but they were fighting totalitarian communists. Thus, taking hard measures was understandable. Cromwell and the Puritan Roundheads who backed him were tyrannical religious fanatics who don’t have the excuse of fighting against a regime anywhere near as vile and murderous as a communist government.
LOL. It’s been awhile? Agree about communism. The world is reluctant to talk too much about the evil of communism. The cruelty that Ukrainians, Estonians, ect suffered at the hand of Stalin.
The Ukrainians keep their anti-communist Bandera resistance movement going into the mid-1950s. The anti-communist resistance in the Baltic states (less well known!) was such that each ‘republic’ had a NKVD\KGB security division stationed in them all the way up to the collapse of the USSR. When they regained their independence their SS veterans paraded in their independence parades up until they were too old to parade.
People throw ‘Nazi Nazi’ around indiscriminately in regard to Ukraine and I guess the Baltic states. People here just can’t imagine the hate generated by Stalinist\Soviet oppression that went on there. A hate that was such where the reasoning was “If I have to kill Jews (or Poles!) to kill Russians I’ll kill Jews (or Poles!) to kill Russians!”. That’s the choices the WWII generation of the Baltic States & Ukraine faced. May you never face such a choice. Not excusing it just acknowledging it.
The real world and real history doesn’t break out along clear fault lines, lots of mist & gray - the enemy of my enemy is my friend .. for now, is more the case, more true than one would like to believe!
Yes and from what I have read the Poles never saw the Russians as liberators. There was little difference between a Nazi concentration camp or being sent to Siberia.
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